AMAZED BY MAKING: TEACHERS' EXPERIENCES WITH PBL

"I think it's an amazing experience for kids to make this, I really got excited. And something here is very authentic", summarized one teacher the previous several weeks she had spent with her ninth graders, dealing with history by way of PBL (Project-Based Learning). "He made an amazing thing in the products evening. I'm out of words… I am shaking as I speak", added a social studies teacher in a staff meeting. Both citations were documented in a participant-observation conducted at the end of the 2015 school year. What brings these teachers to feel so excited and to express their feelings to such extent? Based on a recent ethnographic study conducted in an Israeli high school branded as a school of excellence in science and technology, we suggest that at least part of the answer lies in experiencing the culture of making.

The study focused on the implementation of PBL in the school as part of an innovative pedagogy this school is experimenting in the last three years, titled 'multi-layered learning in a changing reality'. The research goal was to investigate the teachers' views of PBL and the ways by which these views have changed following the experience of designing, teaching, and evaluating such learning activities.
Indeed, interesting results emerged from the inductive analysis of the data gathered through semi-structures interviews as well as participant observations in teachers' reflective meetings. The emergent core categories consisted of PBL-centered views, students-centered views, and teachers-centered views. The latter core category included expressions of enthusiasm, excitement, and satisfaction by the participants, like those arising from the two citations above. This paper will focus mainly on the excitement sub-category and its connection to the theme of making.